Stargazers have been getting a holiday treat this year as Jupiter and Saturn are appearing closer together than they have been since the Middle Ages, an astral phenomenon called the "Great Conjunction."
As some have dubbed it the "Christmas star," a conjunction occurs when two objects in space appear closer together when viewed from Earth. The last time Jupiter and Saturn came this close was 1623, but it wasn't visible down here.
"You'd have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky," Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan told USA TODAY earlier this month.
Quite a lot has been going on:
The Great Conjunction: Planets visibly "double-up" for first time in nearly 800 years |
Mars is a dead planet, and that's what makes it so interesting - SBNation.com
Mars is dead. As corpses go, it's pretty interesting: volcanos so big they might have altered the planet's rotation ; enough atmosphere to support seasonal weather patterns; a cleft in its surface that makes the Grand Canyon look like a roadside ditch; polar ice caps; tantalizing, suggestive geological features. It's interesting enough that humanity has spent some time and effort getting to know it.
As of this writing there is a little plutonium-powered robot scootching around on the floor of one of Mars' craters, getting to know the planet still further. Curiosity is the latest in a line of celebrated Mars expeditions, which began with the Vikings in the 1970s and continue to be despatched, with intermittent success, up to the present day. Our robots, however, are just the vanguard.
Hubble spots distant exoplanet similar to potential 'Planet Nine' - CNN
(CNN) A massive exoplanet orbiting in a double star system 336 light-years away may be similar to the alleged "Planet Nine" that may exist on the outskirts of our solar system, according to a new study.
Not to change the topic here:
Rogue planets wander the galaxy all alone | Science News for Students
Not all planets orbit stars. Some zip through our galaxy all on their own. And now astronomers have found the smallest of these rogue planets yet.
The newly discovered wandering world has roughly the mass of Earth. With no sun in its sky, it's always nighttime on this lonely planet. And that sky is a lot darker and filled with more stars than can be seen from any place on Earth.
"The sky must be marvelous," says Przemek Mróz. He is an astronomer at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif. He led the team that discovered the planet . But the lack of a sun does come at a cost, he says. "It must be freezing cold, too."
The economics of protecting the planet from an asteroid disaster : Planet Money : NPR
As we were looking back over the year we realized one thing hadn't happened. We haven't been hit by an asteroid. Yet. But we do have a show on the topic in the archives, and, given the year, we thought it might be a good idea to roll it back out. You know, just in case. There are still a couple of days left.
Meet 'Pi' — a new Earth-sized planet | Science News for Students
Researchers have discovered a new Earth-sized planet. It's orbiting a dim red star some 185 light-years away. The planet's official name is K2-315b. But its nickname is "Pi Earth." The reason: It orbits its star every 3.14 days.
That orbit reminded astronomers of the irrational number pi, written as the Greek letter π. An irrational number is one that can't be written as a fraction or a ratio. And the first three digits of pi are 3.14.
Pi is also a mathematical constant. To calculate it, you need to know just two measurements from any circle. The first one is the circle's circumference. And the second one is the circle's diameter. To find pi, just divide that circle's circumference by its diameter. This number will be the same no matter what circle you started with. There are an infinite number of digits in the pi.
Aliens at Proxima Centauri? A New Radio… | The Planetary Society
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no one—including the astronomers analyzing the data—are claiming they've found aliens. A paper analyzing the findings is not expected to be published until early 2021, so there's a lot we don't know.
The signal was found by Breakthrough Listen , a privately funded effort to search for signals from intelligent beings.
Breakthrough Listen scientists recorded the signal while monitoring Proxima Centauri for flares to understand how they might affect conditions on the star's planets.
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